NOW HERE IS A MAN THAT I FIND DESPICABLE

Robert Novak gets on my nerves more and more lately. Maybe it is because he takes such a hard line against the Clintons, both of whom I regard highly as public figures. I admit, President Clinton's personal troubles irritated me at the time, but when nearly fifty percent of the married men in America cheat on their wives, I find it hard to condemn the President for it. Sure you would like for the President to be above human fault, but I'm sorry to say that isn't going to happen as long as the President is a human.

ASIDE: Besides all that, I think Clinton was the first President in my lifetime to consider the ways public policy will affect future generations. Arguably Reagan viewed the Soviet threat that way, but certainly not fiscal policy. GWBush doesn't seem to view anything in its long-term. I thought he might consider the War on Terrorism that way, but then he instituted his policy of pre-emption, and we attacked Iraq--both short-term outlooks, in my mind because he was willing to say, "We will do this alone. We don't need anybody else." Then he proposes not one, but two, tax cuts (for the wealthy) IN A TIME OF WAR! That was a first, and again short-sighted. But, I digress.

NOVAK: The biggest thing about Novak that bothers me is that HE is the one responsible for identifying Valerie Plame (Joe Wilson's wife) as a CIA operative. The leak of that information is currently being investigated by a grand jury, and in fact President Bush was questioned by Justice Department investigators just last week about it. I do not doubt that Karl Rove had something to do with the leak, and I hope someone in the White House takes responsibility for it. After all, identifying an active CIA operative as such in public is AGAINST THE LAW! Which brings me back to Novak--everyone knows that he wrote the column in which he named unidentified sources saying that Ms. Plame was indeed an agent of the CIA.

My question is: why isn't Novak facing criminal charges? HE was the one who made her status public. Certainly he is protected in his first amendment rights as a journalist to publish whatever he chooses and to protect his sources of information; however, HE VIOLATED FEDERAL LAW which is designed to protect foreign agents and their families so that they can freely perform their duties. In my mind, that protection should take precedence over Novak's first amendment right to freely express himself.

Wouldn't this fit into the category of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes' majority opinion in the decision during WW1 wherein the Supreme Court found a pamphlet urging citizens to defy the draft was not protected by the freedom of speech? Holmes wrote that "while the ideas expressed in the pamphlet would normally deserve 'freedom of speech' protection under the Bill of Rights, the clear and present danger caused by the circumstances (World War I) allowed the government to intervene: 'The most stringent protection of free speech...would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic.'" Does the criteria of being a secret agent of the CIA (an expert in weapons of mass destruction, BTW) during a time of war not also fall into the category of Holmes' extenuating circumstances that would not deserve freedom of speech protection? Some things to think about, if you can decipher them!